Dead Memory
by LithiumDoll
Summary: Set just after IP:IA Aeryncentric


A/N: Written for an Aeryn!Angst challenge  
  
Disclaimer: Usual ones apply  
  
---  
  
She held her hands tight over her mouth to smother the laughter. Waking slowly, curled still against the now cool body, her eyes had opened to focus on the blanket covering his shoulder. There was a frayed hole there and, just for a moment, she had thought that was why he must be cold. Then the last of her sleep was gone and only the loss had remained. And it was funny, in a dry, racking way that threatened to tear her throat and burn her eyes. So, she held it in because that was the kind of laughter that made you die inside. She had nothing left to lose but what he'd left within her, and that she would not let go.  
  
What did his people do to honour their dead? Had he ever told her? Something akin to panic flared, she couldn't remember. Memory was already slipping away. Would she remember his accent in an arn, the exact color of his eyes in a cycle? One hand crept over to trace his arm, never quite touching and wanting so badly to. To try to fix in her mind the exact texture of the skin under her finger tips. But she wouldn't, it might replace another memory of him that she would never know she'd lost.  
  
The door swung open, Stark revealed, standing neither in nor out. His voice sounded so soft, but she didn't want to hear it. Would that voice taint the one that lived now only in her head? Before she could even register the words, her hands were over her ears. The laughter could come, if it wanted, but nothing must be allowed to disturb the memory. Dilute it. Nothing.  
  
"Aeryn. Aeryn, please, Aeryn. Please."   
  
The words came anyway, with the warmth of the Stykera's lightest touch on her brow. Muffled and, she knew, designed to sooth. Didn't he understand?   
  
"Leave me alone. Go. Go!" It wasn't laughter that tore ragged from her, but she felt it there still, on a knife edge that would scar the bone. Her eyes poured acid over hot cheeks, too hot on this desert planet.   
  
He fell back as if struck, hands raised beseeching. "Crichton must be buried. Six feet under, Stark. To rot and rot and rot and see heaven and worms. Buried, Aeryn. I saw it, I saw it. I promise."  
  
'Six feet under, Stark...' Her breath caught and she was grasping at him, pulling at his clothes, carrying them both to the floor. Her limbs felt heavy, awkward, but he gave no resistance as she lay over him, palms pressed each side of his head.  
  
"He's there, he's in you. Bring him back! Zhaan used you to bring me back, you can do it."  
  
"No. I can't, even Zhaan, even she could not, would not, bring a spirit back to a body so tired."  
  
"A diagnosan, a diagnosan could fix the body. Then you bring back the soul. Or, we'll find a P'au even better than Zhaan. I need him Stark."  
  
Her final words were punctuated with her fingers tightening to his skull, red welts beginning to form there and still he didn't fight. She wanted him to fight, to feel her pain as if she could pierce his skin with her nails and let it spread like poison into him.  
  
"He's dead, Officer Sun. But you are right, I remember him, he's in me. He's in you too. Always in you."  
  
She released him, tired again, barely able to find the breath to whisper the words. "There is nothing in me. Bury him, I won't watch."  
  
"Good. Good. Soon, we'll come soon." His hands moved in conciliatory circles before him as he rose, caught half between leaning forward to offer comfort, away to offer space. Only when he was at the door, backing away and stumbling over his feet, did he speak again. "Soon." And then he was gone and she was alone once more.  
  
Numbness dragging, she knelt beside the bed where he lay, unchanged, unmoving. He moved a lot, in his sleep. She remembered. He spoke, sometimes, nonsense words. Once he had played with her, speaking nonsense while she thought he slept, only realising he was awake when his lips twitched to a smile. The smile was there now and she allowed herself to touch his lip, unable to stop it, too tired to fight the need.  
  
The flesh was cold, unyielding. Alien. It wasn't John. The nightmare of laughter came unresisted for this memory she could never forget. 


End file.
